Jason Link, Ph.D.

Jason Link is the Senior Scientist for Ecosystem-based Management at NOAA Fisheries. In this role, he leads efforts to support the development of ecosystem-based management plans and activities throughout the agency, serving as the agency’s senior-most authority on ecosystem science. Dr. Link has been a champion of ecosystem science and ecosystem-based management, both as a discipline and as a practice, for resource management agencies in the U.S. and around the world. His research interests include marine resource-ecosystem modeling methodologies, marine food web topology, globally consistent patterns in ecosystem cumulative biomass distributions, and delineation of ecosystem overfishing thresholds. Dr. Link has extensive experience working in marine and Great Lakes systems around the world. He has written the best practices for two widely used ecosystem models, and has advanced several aspects of trophic ecological theory. 

Dr. Link advises NOAA senior leadership on ecosystem considerations that influence both NOAA’s policy-mission interface and the operational execution of its mission. He led the development of NOAA Fisheries’ Ecosystem-based Fisheries Management Policy, the EBFM Road Map, and the Climate Science Strategy, and continues to contribute to several ongoing strategic science, modeling, and integrated management plans and guidelines. He has served on numerous national and international resource management committees, review panels, editorial boards, advisory boards, and executive boards, including serving on the National Academy of Sciences’ Decadal Survey of Ocean Science Study Board, as the NOAA representative to the US Global Change Research Program’s National Nature Assessment Federal Steering Committee, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Commission on Ecosystem Management and Fisheries Experts Group, the international Marine Ecosystem-based Management Progress Evaluation Group, the Science Advisory Board for the Institute of Marine Research, as a panelist for the United Nations 15th Informal Consultations of States Parties to UNCLOS, Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks, Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management, the National Marine Ecosystem Status webpage working group, and the editorial board of an international marine science journal.   

Dr. Link has served at NOAA for over 25 years and holds an adjunct faculty position at the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts and executive leadership certificates from the Harvard Kennedy School and Key Program at the American University. He is a Frohlich Fellow, a fellow of the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists and has received the Fisheries Society of the British Isles Medal for significant advances in fisheries science, along with a Department of Commerce Bronze medal. Dr. Link received his B.S. from Central Michigan University and his Ph.D. from Michigan Technological University.